


Honey Our Love's Bittersweet (Just How I Like It)

by WhatIsAir



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1940s flashbacks, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, M/M, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, courtship and wooing, featuring corporate coffees that totally aren't from starbucks, in the form of flowers and dead HYDRA agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6528469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatIsAir/pseuds/WhatIsAir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve finds the flowers on his doorstep. In the slack grip of an unconscious HYDRA agent. </p><p>Sam raises an eyebrow. “Oh, this is real cute, Rogers. Your man knows how to do it. First flowers, then the douchebag looking to assassinate you. You bet your ass the next thing he sends’ll be a ring and a note proposing.”</p><p>Steve's face flushes the colour of the communist flag.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honey Our Love's Bittersweet (Just How I Like It)

_“I had him on the ropes,” Steve mutters, swiping the back of his hand across his cut lip and glaring mutinously at him, like it’s_ Bucky’s _fault that Steve got his ass handed to him by the thugs that_ he _decided to pick a fight with._

_“Yeah, champ, you sure did,” Bucky says instead, stretching out a hand._

_Steve glares at him for a good five seconds before accepting the hand and letting himself be pulled to his feet._

_He straightens, dusts himself off, then sways dangerously where he stands._

_“Whoa, steady there, pal,” Bucky says, and he’s there, hooking one of Steve’s arms over his shoulders and sliding a steadying arm around his waist to help him back down the street._

_To anyone else watching, they’re just a couple of pals, drunk after a night out and stumbling back to their apartments in the harsh light of day._

_Steve’s leaning most of his weight on Bucky, and seeing as the guy weighs 90 pounds soaking wet, it’s not saying much. But it does give an indication of how much pain Steve must be in, if he’s letting Bucky essentially carry him home to their apartment._

_“Stevie –” Bucky starts, concern furrowing his brow._

_“I’m fine,” Steve says shortly, clearly anything but._

_Bucky purses his lips but shuts up. Instead he tightens his grip on Steve, and they walk on._

-

The Soldier paces in agitation.

Eleven paces up, eleven paces down. Up, down. His boots squeak against the linoleum and he winces at the sound, so he stops.

“Can I help you, sir?”

The Soldier looks up, wild-eyed. A civilian’s speaking to him, hands gesturing animatedly in the air as she speaks. He notes the tag on her chest that reads ‘Hi, I’m Claire’ and immediately dismisses her as irrelevant: not a target, and not a threat, either.

He turns back to the mission at hand.

“Is there anything specific you’re looking for, sir?” Claire pipes up, and the Soldier closes his eyes briefly in irritation before he turns, going into mode: civilian interaction.

He wets his lip with his tongue, hoping his disused voice won’t crack as he says, “Flowers. For a –” he racks his brain for the term the Captain used, “– a friend.”

Claire raises her eyebrows and pops the gum she’s chewing. “A friend, huh?”

He stays silent, and Claire whistles, long and low. “Must be some friend,” she says, then – “Follow me,” she says over her shoulder, and leads him down the aisle.

“Take your pick,” she says, a minute later, when they’re standing in front of the correct section in the supermarket.

The Soldier stares. There are potted ferns and flowering cacti and violets and magnolias and he doesn’t have a single clue what the Captain likes.

“I don’t,” he says, and turns to Claire, desperation in his eyes.

She takes one look at him and points him at an elegant bouquet to his left. “That one has some of everything, if you’re not sure what this… friend of yours likes.”

She winks at him and leaves, and the Soldier stares after her, unsure whether his civilian interaction protocols need updating, or whether winking is generally translatable to a farewell in this bright, technology-congested future.

-

Steve finds the flowers on his doorstep. In the slack grip of an unconscious, trussed-up and gagged HYDRA agent. (Steve can tell because the first thing he says when Steve wakes him, ripping the tape off is “Hail Hydra, Hail Hydra,” over and over again, like a broken record. Steve tapes his mouth shut again.)

There’s a tag on the bouquet, which Steve flips over. On the back, in Bucky’s characteristically messy scrawl, it says: _Found him watching you @ the park. Jog somewhere else, Rogers._

“What the hell’s all this racket?” Sam yells from his room. There’s a click as the door opens and then Sam’s padding down the hall. Steve knows precisely when he rounds the corner because he lets out a manly yelp – “Steve, what the _fuck_!”

Steve and the HYDRA agent both look up; Steve with a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes, the agent with unadulterated terror in his.

“He’s… he sent me this.” Steve thrusts the bouquet at Sam. “He left me a _note_ , Sam.”

“Uh-huh, I can see that,” Sam says, craning his neck to read the tag upside down when Steve appears unwilling to let go of the bouquet for more than two seconds.

“And he sent this,” Steve nudges the agent’s knee with his foot. The agent makes a muffled noise of protest that both Steve and Sam ignore. “Buck’s been lookin’ out for me.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, half-amused, half-skeptical. “Oh, this is real cute, Rogers. Your man knows how to do it. First flowers, then the douchebag looking to assassinate you. You bet your ass the next thing he sends’ll be a ring and a note proposing.”

“Shut up,” Steve says, face flushing as he glances down.

The HYDRA agent rolls his eyes and Steve, annoyed, reaches down and knocks him out again.

-

“A… coffee,” the Soldier says to the barista, after scanning an eye over the elaborately named beverages and failing to understand what any of them contain.

The civilian’s eyebrows lift so high they’re in danger of disappearing into the beanie he’s wearing. “You’re gonna have to be more specific, buddy.”

The Soldier frowns, wondering whether something called a _chai latte with a double shot of espresso_ or a _double whipped-cream mochaccino_ is less likely to give him food poisoning.

“I’ll have the,” he squints dubiously at the menu over Beanie’s head, “strawberry frappucino.”

“Would you like it large, medium or small?” Beanie raps out, sounding bored as he punches in the order.

“I… medium.”

“Would you like that with cream, or without?”

“I – with.” The Soldier fidgets, disliking the number of options and the _choices_ he’s had to make since HYDRA and everything in his known world dissolved into the Potomac along with the helicarrier. Sometimes he _misses_ the easily comprehensible world-order HYDRA gave him; the choices that he didn’t have to make.

“That’ll be four fifty-five,” Beanie says, and the Soldier hands him a crumpled five that he’d stolen from the lady in line behind him.

The frappucino is sickeningly sweet; the Soldier loves (he’s allowed to _love_ things now) it.

He pulls his baseball cap down low over his eyes and stands in the shade of a tree, sipping his drink as he watches Rogers, Steven Grant run laps around the Lincoln Memorial.

It’s mesmerizing, watching the Captain run. The stretch of his too-small shirt across his too-broad shoulders, the shift of muscle in his back, the thrum of power in his thighs. The Soldier has to remind himself to tear his eyes away: the Captain’s muscles are not the day’s mission objectives.

It takes him longer than usual, possibly because he let himself get sidetracked by the Captain, but by the time he’s done with his drink, he’s identified all the agents tracking the Captain’s every movement. Some of them are SHIELD, presumably for Rogers’ protection. The others, however. The others are HYDRA (what’s left of it), and the Soldier narrows his eyes, picking out the ‘blind’ man sitting on a nearby park bench with eerie stillness, the woman who’s strolled past the same patch of grass five times since the Soldier’s been here.

The Captain either remains oblivious or simply doesn’t care. He runs another lap, and then another, and the Soldier wonders if he ever tires of running, if he ever wants to just… stop.

Movement to the left catches his eye and the Soldier moves, frappucino abandoned by the tall grass by the tree. He gets behind the woman just as she’s taking out her gun (Glock, 0.45) and takes her out with a swift blow to the temple. She crumples, and he eases her to ground, taking the gun with him.

By this point the agent on the bench has abandoned the blind pretense and is striding across the expanse of grass, pulling his gun out of its holster. The Soldier raises the stolen Glock, then glances at the Captain, still running in the distance: he doesn’t want to disturb his morning run and cause a scene.

The Soldier tucks the gun into his boot and tackles the agent, twisting the gun-wielding hand up behind his back until he grunts in pain and drops the weapon. The Soldier kicks it out of reach and knocks him out with the flat of his metal hand.

He drags the two agents behind the park bench and leaves them piled there. He rescues his now-empty coffee cup and scrawls a hasty message, then leaves it perched on top the agents.

-

“On your left,” Steve says to the woman in front of him, out of habit. (It’s not her first rodeo though; she’s already gotten used to jogging on the right side of the track after weeks of Steve haranguing her.)

He finishes the lap and refills his water bottle. He’s about to head home when the glint of something under the sun has him flattening his back against the nearest tree trunk, readying himself for combat.

A minute passes, and when there’s not telltale _ratatat_ of gunfire, Steve cautiously pokes his head out.

The glint, he realizes belatedly, had been reflected off a plastic coffee cup perched on a nearby park bench. The tightness in his chest eases, and he heads over to the bench, picking up the cup to toss in the trash.

The messy scrawl on the back stops him. Steve turns the cup around, his heart beating somewhere in the back of his throat as he reads: _Found two more. Stop jogging here – I mean it_ , _Rogers_.

Steve frowns at the message. His expression clears when he peers around the back of the bench and finds the unconscious agents.

Glancing at the message again, Steve traces a finger over the hastily scribbled ‘Rogers’. There’s still condensation on the cup; Buck can’t have left that long ago.

Steve smiles to himself. He calls Sam.

-

“That is a terrible plan,” Sam says, leaning back in his chair, his towering stack of pancakes scraped clean.

Steve frowns, pointing a spatula at him. “It is not. You should hear some of Tony’s.” He pitches his voice to a high, annoying whine. “ _I’ve got a plan – attack!_ ”

Sam sniggers, making a mental note _not_ to mention this around Stark if he ever meets him. “Yeah, but don’t you think it says something about the two of you that you’re essentially wooing each other with dead and/or unconscious enemy agents?”

Steve’s expression is unreadable as he furiously whisks more pancake batter. Finally he sets the bowl down against the kitchen counter and leans back against a cabinet, wiping his hands on a wash cloth. “Okay, but how else do I get his attention? It’s not like Buck carries a phone around with him, you know.”

“I’m not saying you gotta call the guy up,” Sam says, and steals a pancake from Steve’s plate. Steve pretends not to see, something which Sam will always be grateful for. “I’m just saying there might be other, less flamboyant, less illegal ways to get to him.”

Steve sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face. He looks tired, world-weary. He picks up the spatula and glares at it like it’s offended him on a personal level.

“Okay,” he eventually says, shoulders slumping in defeat, and Sam wants to kick himself for putting that expression on Captain America’s face. (It feels not unlike how kicking a wounded puppy might feel.)

“Okay,” Steve says again, morosely. “I’ll think of something else.”

He pushes his entire plate towards Sam and leaves the kitchen. Sam stares after him, wondering if it’s morally acceptable to finish all of Captain America’s pancakes when he’s clearly down in the dumps.

Steve doesn’t return for more than thirty seconds.

Sam shrugs, and helps himself.

-

The Soldier stands sipping his corporate coffee (today it’s a vanilla latte), and wonders whether his _friend_ Rogers, Steven Grant is suicidal.

Because the Captain is, once again, out running laps by the Lincoln Memorial. _Despite_ the lengths the Soldier’s gone to prove how dangerous it is to him.

Maybe the Captain _likes_ danger, the Soldier thinks, and his heart beats faster at the thought. Because _he’s_ danger and maybe there’s a chance the Captain will like _him_.

The Soldier leans back against the tree under whose shade he’s taking refuge, and picks out the SHIELD and HYDRA agents dotted around the park. There are no more than five put together; SHIELD’s resources must be stretched thin in the cleanup of D.C. and the Potomac as it is.

There’s something different today, though, and the Soldier tilts his head, eyes narrowing as he assesses the situation. The agent nearest the Captain is a woman in her thirties, currently drinking at the public water fountain. She straightens, lips moving as she speaks into her earpiece. The Soldier’s too far away to make out the words, but then the agent flicks a surreptitious glance up at the Memorial and the Soldier is able to make out the unmistakable glint of the sun reflecting off a sniper’s scope.

The Soldier abandons his mission protocol and lets Bucky Barnes’ instincts take over.

-

_“Be careful out there, Buck,” Steve says, reaching under the table the Commandos are grouped around and squeezing Bucky’s knee. The guys titter, and Steve flushes in the dull light of the lamps hung on the tent walls._

_“Ain’t I always,” Bucky drawls, letting his lips quirk up in a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t you worry that head of yours, Stevie.”_

_Later, when DumDum and Gabe Jones and all the rest of them have filed out, Steve leans across the scattered maps and hastily scribbled diagrams that make up their plan for the ambush tomorrow, and presses his lips insistently to Bucky’s._

_Bucky gives, opens his mouth and lets Steve in, because it’s 1943 and he didn’t think he’d make it off Zola’s table alive._

_“Promise me you’ll take care tomorrow,” Steve murmurs, pulling back to look Bucky in the eye._

_Bucky darts forward to press a kiss to Steve’s jaw so he doesn’t have to. “Promise.”_

_Steve’s about to say something else, and Bucky can’t have that (he doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle the guilt), so he goes round the table and climbs into Steve’s lap, his knees bracketing Steve’s hips, and covers Steve’s mouth with his own._

-

Steve winces as someone rams into him, hard, bringing him crashing down to the ground in an unwitting tangle of limbs.

“What –”

“I told you to stop jogging here,” he hears, and Steve’s eyes snap to Bucky’s face because – yes, it’s him, and Steve thinks _fucking finally_. He can feel the smile spreading across his face, so wide it hurts.

“Buck,” he says happily, content to lie sprawled in the grass, legs tangled together with Bucky’s.

“You’ve got to get outta here,” Bucky says, and Steve notes for the first time the urgency in his voice, the beginnings of a beard on his cheek, the baseball cap pulled low so only half his face is visible.

He sits up straighter, instantly more alert. “What’s happening, Buck?”

“Coupla snipers watching you,” Bucky discreetly jerks a thumb over his shoulder. Steve sees a woman hastily rummaging in her bag twenty feet away, one hand pressed to her ear like she’s awaiting instructions via earpiece. “They’re not SHIELD. I checked.”

“I –” It takes Steve a while to process the information he’s just heard. “Why would SHIELD be watching me?”

Beneath the cap, Bucky’s eyebrows rise skyhigh. “You’re not serious,” he says flatly. “Rogers, do you have any idea how many SHIELD agents have been assigned to your protection detail?”

“Of course I do,” Steve says indignantly, then, when he realizes belatedly that he doesn’t have a clue – “Oh.”

Bucky sighs, the same sigh he used to give whenever Steve proposed overly reckless, harebrained schemes when they were kids. It’s the sigh that someone resigned to dealing with someone else’s shit gives. (Steve would know; he’s been on the giving end of that sigh very often.)

Bucky gets to his feet, holding out a (gloved) hand for Steve to take. He pulls Steve to his feet, clapping him on the back and taking the opportunity to lean in close and say, “Two more up on the Memorial. Go round the back; I’ll deal with the woman.”

Steve watches as Bucky turns and jogs off in the opposite direction, stopping to ask the agent for directions and buying him time. He keeps his head down and makes his way to the back of the Lincoln Memorial.

-

“Excuse me, do you know where the nearest antiques shop is?” the Soldier asks. He picks antiques because it seems unlikely there’s one in the immediate vicinity, and he needs something to stall for time if he’s to give the Captain time to get to the snipers on the Memorial.

“No, sorry, I don’t,” the agent says brusquely, and turns to leave, clearly intent on the cutting the conversation short.

“Ma’am, please, it’s important,” the Soldier says, walking after her. “It’s for a friend, you see.”

“No, I really don’t,” the agent says, but she stays, fidgeting impatiently, and listens to the Soldier give an extremely long and detailed description of the antiques shop and its approximate location.

“…be able to find the shop, I can fix the watch and return it to him,” the Soldier finishes, unable to remember half of what he’d said.

The agent glances in consternation at her own watch, says, “I’ve really got to go, but good luck finding the shop,” and is turning to leave when she visibly flinches. The Soldier watches in grim satisfaction as she gives up the pretext, wrenching the crackling earpiece from her ear and glancing up at the Memorial in concern.

“I – it’s a wireless,” she says, a weak attempt at justification, and hurries away before the Soldier can say anything.

He glances up at the Memorial, and just barely makes out the Captain’s hand, waving with all the enthusiasm of a five-year-old, not someone who’s just finished taking out two snipers targeting him.

The Soldier feels a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth; he finds the Captain rather… endearing. He raises a hand in – a salute, a farewell – and leaves before he can do anything he might regret.

-

Steve finds the cake on his front doorstep, along with a note scrawled onto the cardboard box: _That was fun we should do that again sometime_ , followed by a smiley face and a hastily crossed-out heart, like its author had written the note in a rush, gone back and thought it was too sappy.

Steve opens the box and is immediately hit with the delicious smell of raspberry and chocolate. He closes his eyes and has a mini-orgasm in Sam’s front hall.

“Sam,” he calls, crossing the living room and setting the cake on the kitchen table. “Look what came in the mail.”

Sam appears in the doorway of his bedroom in his morning-run attire, looping the cord of his earphones over the back of his neck. “Steve, I swear if it’s another HYDRA agent I will –”

“Buck sent me a cake,” Steve says, waving the box excitedly under Sam’s nose. “He even remembered my favourite – chocolate and raspberry. It’s what his ma used to make all the time.”

“Oh, that’s real sweet of him,” Sam says, shaking his head at the wistful expression on Steve’s face. Then, “Are you sure he hasn’t poisoned it?” as Steve raises a cake-laden forkful to his mouth.

Steve pauses with his mouth open, fork poised at optimum cake-launching position.

“ _Sam_ ,” he says, sounding scandalized and highly insulted at the very thought that a highly-trained assassin with seventy years’ experience under his belt could possibly entertain the _thought_ of killing the man he’s been specifically assigned to annihilate.

Steve lowers his fork. “Well, when you put it like that,” he says, scowling heavily, and Sam startles, because he hadn’t realized he’d been talking aloud.

Sam shrugs. “Just trying to save your life, man. You’re not gonna do it cause you’re an idiot, so someone’s gotta.”

Steve remains inconspicuously silent, and when Sam leaves the house at a jog, a hand raised in farewell, he slams shut the front door and makes a beeline straight for the cake still perched on the table.

“Mm,” he says, after the first mouthful.

“Oh my _God_ ,” he says, after the second.

“ _Jesus, Mary and Joseph_ ,” he moans, after the third. (To any unsuspecting observer the sounds Steve makes as he devours the cake verge on the pornographic, but there’s no one around to judge so Steve lets himself go.)

The cake’s gone, the quick work of approximately two minutes and forty-five seconds, and as Steve leans back in his chair, staring mournfully at the bereft box.

He wonders if Bucky’s going to send more.

-

_Steve’s down, and Bucky doesn’t think, just throws himself into the fray as he swipes Steve’s shield where it’s fallen and covers for him, shooting at the HYDRA soldier as the floor of the train car jostles, rattling them through the Alps at ninety miles per hour._

_The soldier rams against the shield hard, and Bucky’s thrown off balance, the shield wrenched out of his hands as he’s swept out of the train car altogether. He manages to hang on to the side, and wills himself not to think of the sheer drop below as he clings desperately on._

_“Buck!”_

_He glances up to see the soldier sprawled, unconscious, on the floor. An icy wind’s tearing at his face, his hair, but through it all he sees Steve, leaning out of the train car, hand outstretched –_

_“Grab my hand!”_

_Bucky tries; he really does. The tips of their gloved hands graze the other’s, and that’s about all they manage before the train turns sharply and Bucky loses his hold and falls, and falls, and falls._

_The expression on Steve’s face is pure anguish, and Bucky squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to see._

_Later, much later, when he’s lying at the bottom of the ravine with his body aflame and possibly in separate pieces, Bucky grits his teeth and tells himself_ this is nothing, this is nothing _, because it’s true._

_Nothing could possibly hurt more than losing Steve._

-

The Soldier and Bucky open their eyes, sitting bolt upright in their bed, drenched in cold sweat from having relived the nightmare.

Bucky gets shakily to his feet, and barely makes it to the bathroom before he’s retching. Even after he’s expelled the contents of his entire stomach he keeps dry-heaving, until there’s nothing left to vomit except bile.

He reaches into the pocket of the hoodie he doesn’t take off, takes out the phone he’d pickpocketed earlier, and dials the number he’s had memorized since Pierce first handed him the file with _Rogers, Steven Grant (codename: Captain America)_ printed on the front.

Steve picks up on the third ring, even though it’s 3am.

Bucky clears his throat. “Stevie I – uh. I need your help.”

-

**_3 months later_ **

“On your left, Sam, on your _fucking_ left!” Bucky snaps, and is only slightly mollified when Sam takes out the offending Kree by clipping it on the head with a metal wing.

Sam’s put-out sigh crackles over the comm. “You two _deserve_ each other, you really do.”

Bucky opens his mouth, about to ask what the hell Sam means by that, when he catches sight of Steve’s telltale red-white-and-blue, and the huge swarm of Kree warriors he’s battling all at once. Steve’s in the process of snapping one’s neck, and his preoccupation means he utterly fails to notice another three coming at him from behind.

“Oh no you don’t,” Bucky growls, tucking his rifle more securely against his shoulder and readjusting his grip.

The next thing he registers, Steve’s standing amidst a pile of Kree corpses, and Bucky’s clip is completely empty. A glance down the scope shows Steve grinning up in his direction.

“You know, Buck,” Steve says over the comm, voice curling warmly in Bucky’s ear. “I can handle a couple Krees myself.”

“Sorry,” Bucky says, “Was just watching your six.”

“You just want an excuse to have your eyes on my ass,” Steve drawls, Brooklyn in his voice, and Bucky smirks.

“Well, what can I say,” he grins, twisting and bringing a knee up , hard, into the Kree trying to ambush him from behind. He garrotes it, Widow-style, and wipes its blood on his pants. “It’s a thing of beauty.”

“Guys,” Barton chimes in (he’s on the roof of a building half a block down from Bucky), “You know this is a public comm, right? We can all hear you.”

“By all means, continue,” Stark says, from where he’s busy dive-bombing Krees and chucking them back into the portal they’d come through. “They’re 90-year-old geriatrics, don’t you think they deserve to live a little?”

“There should be shrines built to honour that ass,” Bucky says reverently, and chuckles when Natasha, Barton and Stark all groan simultaneously across the comms.

“Go on,” Steve says, ignoring Stark’s scandalized, “ _Captain!_ ”

“Y’know how I knew you were an angel, Stevie?” Bucky says, shooting another Kree that’d been trying to sneak up behind Steve, “I saw your ass in spandex and I had a revelation: there ain’t nobody but God who’s got the power to make something so beautiful –”

“Oh my God, someone, anyone!” Sam yells as he joins Stark by the portal and they proceed to play Kree-frisbee, “Just shut Barnes the hell up!”

“I ain’t done, Wilson,” Bucky smirks, and starts picking off any Kree stragglers along the street with his rifle. “Steve, your ass should be a national monument or somethin’, cause every time I see it I get this overwhelming urge to –”

“ _Do you have any idea how much this secure comms line costs_ ,” Director Fury bellows out of the blue, and Bucky winces; he’d forgotten SHIELD HQ could hear them. “ _Barnes, Rogers – I will have words with you after this is done_.”

They send the last few Krees packing, then they leave Manhattan looking like it’s been hit with a freak hurricane, and for the next fifteen minutes, Bucky valiantly tries and fails to keep a straight face as Director Fury paces in front of them and lectures them on comms-etiquette, and whether discussion of Steve’s _undoubtedly fine_ ass was pertinent to the overall success of the mission.

 Steve and Bucky stumble out of Fury’s office, holding onto each other and howling with laughter. They stop in the common area where the rest of the team are gathered.

“I take it the ‘talk’ went well?” Sam asks, raising an eyebrow.

That’s enough to set them off again. It takes ten minutes to calm the supersoldiers down enough for them to form even semi-coherent sentences.

“Shoulda seen his f – _face_ ,” Steve says, breathless with laughter.

Bucky clears his throat and pitches his voice a couple octaves lower. “Captain Rogers’ ass is _not_ , last time I checked, necessary to the mission’s completion.”

“Yeah, it’s not,” Steve murmurs, sobering up quickly. He reaches out a hand, tucks a loose piece of hair behind Bucky’s ear. “You are.”

Bucky blinks, the laughter dying in his throat at the look on Steve’s face. “I’m – I’m what?”

“Necessary,” Steve says, “To the mission’s completion. And,” his gaze flickers down, to the curve of Bucky’s lips, “To me.”

It’s been three months, but Bucky doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of hearing Steve tell him, in no uncertain terms, that he’s needed (wanted, cared for, _loved_ ). He scoots forward (they’re both collapsed in a heap on the floor) until his knees bump Steve’s, then tilts his head up to meet Steve’s lips, eyes sliding closed as the universe rights itself and he falls (and falls and falls), and Steve’s there to catch him.

His eyes open and he pulls back, licks his lips, wonders how he can even _begin_ to voice what he feels for Steve. So instead he darts back in to press a light kiss to the tip of Steve’s nose then, when he’s least expecting it, reaches behind and pinches Steve’s ass.

Steve lets out a gratifying yelp (the rest of the team groan and Stark complains about PDA).

Bucky smirks, sketches out a mock-salute. “God _bless_ America and that ass, Stevie.”

He gets up and darts away, laughing, at Steve’s uncoordinated attempt to catch him, and as he leads Steve on a chase through Stark Tower, he thinks about this bright, technology-infused future, with its oversweet corporate coffees (Steve) and sky-high API levels (Steve) and alien invasions ( _Steve_ ), and thinks he can learn to love it.

**Author's Note:**

> y'all thanks for reading hope you enjoyed that xxx
> 
> the nearer it gets to the ca:cw release, the closer i get to the brink of insanity. (the wait's killing me)
> 
> leave a comment if you liked it and tell me what you thought(:


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